


Little Pieces of Nothing

by FakePlastikTrees



Category: Damages
Genre: F/F, Post Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 13:02:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1649582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FakePlastikTrees/pseuds/FakePlastikTrees
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Patty and Ellen go through the motions after they say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Pieces of Nothing

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on two separate prompts I got maybe two years ago and I never finished it. I found a draft and decided it was time. I hope you guys like it.

The drive back into the city revitalized Patty in a manner she couldn’t explain if she tried. After the detectives so carefully broke the news about Michael at the station, in that god forsaken interrogation room, Patty didn’t shed another tear, not at the funeral service, not when Michael’s ashes were handed to her, and not when she scattered his remains with her bare hands into the water. She didn’t feel much, aside from the cold ashes in her palm, slipping away with the wind like sand through her fingers. She felt that and nothing else.

 

She didn’t sleep much but that wasn’t new. She felt numb, more so than usual, she figured it should scare her and for a moment, she considered making an appointment with Doctor Baldwin. He would be ecstatic to hear from her. She was his favorite project.

 

Seeing Catherine upon walking into her apartment made something inside change, like puzzle pieces shifting out place, but not quite.

 

Catherine’s nanny really was the most capable person Patty had ever not hated. She picked up on Patty’s lethargic energy the moment she walked through the door and instantly offered to take Catherine to the park for the afternoon. Patty mumbled her agreement with a wave of her hand on her way upstairs. She stopped at her bedroom door and caught a glimpse of Catherine’s room, once Michael’s.

 

It was a different color now, a different set up, with different furniture and different frames on the wall, different toys scattered on the floor.

 

Patty began to pick up the little girl’s toys, throwing them in the bin in the corner before moving onto make the bed. As she pulled a pillow to her to smooth out the sheets, her gaze caught the tiny black and white panda Michael had tried to trick her into giving Catherine.

 

Her hand trembled as she reached forth and took it, the pillow falling form her grip instantly.

 

She sunk to the floor with the length of the breath that escaped her and she held the small panda bear tightly in her grasp. She closed her eyes and her breath came in gasps of air, her throat beginning to burn, her chest beginning to feel tight before the sobs erupted from her uncontrollably.

 

She gasped and braced herself on the bed as the crying continued and she heard herself as if from far away. She cried until she’d run out of tears and until her throat was hoarse. She couldn’t move for a long time. She felt weak, dehydrated.

 

Slowly, she pulled herself to her feet, her knees protesting as she did so and she made a mental note to tell her trainer to do something about that. She opened her hand, where she’d been holding the stuffed toy, and noticed a piercing sting on her palm. There was a red mark there but it didn’t seem to have pierced the skin, upon closer examination, Patty spotted a Velcro enclosing, no longer than an inch, and inside it, poking out of the fluffy cotton, was a small device the size of a memory card. Squeezing her thumb and index finger inside, she pulled it out and held it up to the light. The battery seemed to have died a long time ago, but Patty had seen a few of these, enough to know what it was. She closed her palm around it and smiled ironically up at the ceiling, silently scolding her son for the audacity and also praising him for his astuteness. He was always too smart for his own good.

 

She walked to her bedroom, exhausted and drained with the panda in one hand and the recorder in the other.

 

Walking up to her nightstand, she glanced at the wastebasket by her bed, then at the small stuffed animal. She pressed it against her nose and inhaled. She could smell Catherine on it and the slightest hint of dust. For a second, she considered throwing it in her drawer and keeping it, instead, she flung it into the basket and picked up her laptop, bringing it with her to bed after kicking off her shoes to settle comfortably against the headboard.

 

The recorder was definitely fried. Patty slid the power button from on to off several times with her fingernail, and got nothing. After a several attempts at the edges, she finally got it open, and as she suspected, the device seemed to be almost a shell to the memory card inside it, which she flipped onto her palm before sliding into the side of her computer.

 

There were approximately eight hours worth of audio, which seemed to jump from date to date, apparently going on for no more than thirty minutes per day.

 

There wasn’t much of particular importance, nothing too alarming; Catherine playing with her dolls, having breakfast with her nanny, Patty coming in to say goodnight. She listened to a few seconds of each separate file before skipping to the next, until finally opening the last. The voice she heard first was not Catherine, or the nanny, or her own.

 

It was Ellen’s.

 

_“Look how big you’re getting! You look nice and healthy.”_

_“Can you say ‘thank you’, Catherine?”_

_“Thank you.”_

_“Where are you ladies heading to?”_

_“The park. Catherine loves the slide.”_

_“You do, huh?” Ellen said, “You want to know a secret?”_

 

_“Yes.”_

_“The slide’s my favorite, too.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Oh, yeah!”_

_“Are you going to come over to see grandma?”_

There was a pause and Patty held her breath, watching the track meter move close to the end.

 

_“No, honey, not for a while.”_

_“Why? Don’t you like us anymore?”_

_“Of course I do, I like you both a lot—“_

 

Patty exhaled and glanced away from the screen,

 

_“—it’s just—tell you what. I will try and come see you soon, okay?”_

_“Okay.”_

_“Okay. That’s a nice looking bear you’ve got—“_

 

The track died.

 

Her throat felt dry, as if it were lined with chalk and if she tried to swallow she would cough, so she cleared it, blinked back the foggy haze she seemed to have been under listening to Ellen’s voice and sat at up straight. Her finger slid across the pad on her laptop, pressing down to drag the file into the recycle bin in her desktop. She didn’t hesitate to empty it and just like that, Ellen was gone. Really gone.

 

She didn’t’ expect her to call, not today, not tomorrow, not a month from now. Something about their last conversation felt final, and tragic.

 

She never opened the briefcase Ellen left her, She didn’t need to open it to know what was in it. She burned it the night before, all of it. She finally made use of the grill in the backyard.

 

 

 

 

“It’s a girl.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“It’s a ‘girl’!” Chris threw his hands up in the air like he’d just scored a goal, and must have been the first time Ellen had seen him that excited since high school. It made her laugh.

 

“Yes, it is!”

 

He kissed her and hugged her, tightly. She grunted and he quickly let her go, stepping back and looking instantly worried. “Oh, shit, I’m sorry, did I hurt the baby?”

 

“No, no, the baby is fine. You just—got a little excited there for a minute.”

 

“I’m very excited, are you kidding me!”

 

He kissed her and for a minute, she got lost in that moment. That sweet, ‘ _normal’_ moment where her life really was working and it really was just what she pictured when she decided to close her tiny little firm.

 

“I’m going to go make some phone calls.”

 

But he left the room and she felt the world titter-totter underneath her feet. Tears stung her eyes and she found the nearest chair because she couldn’t help but hate herself for allowing the first thought in her mind to be that of Patty Hewes as she held her swollen belly. Five months, and counting.

 

She shut her eyes tightly and she saw Patty, standing at the end of that dock, looking out at the water. Years of goodbyes by that water, and never once was it meant to be anything but final. She thought about Michael, sitting in her chair, his lifeless stare judging her for her carelessness and her callousness, her selfishness. She still had a hard time looking herself in the mirror.

 

She felt the blunt, sharp pain she felt that day, in the back of her head where she’d bled from not too long ago. She lifted a hand to the scar that sometimes still felt sore and she opened her eyes, breathing in and out, in, and out.

 

Chris walked back into the kitchen, phone to his ear, talking a mile a minute to some person Ellen couldn’t identify by voice alone. He didn’t notice the tears streaming down her face.

 

 

 

 

The Supreme Court didn’t quite pan out for Patty. She gave it a shot, a trial run as she liked to call it. It served as a distraction for a few months before she was back in the office and a new case had caught her eye.

 

Catherine started preschool. And while it was slightly out of character, Patty felt she owed it to Michael to be more present this time. For Catherine. So, she cut down on work, making it an actual 9 to 5 schedule most days. Some days, she even made out in time to pick Catherine up from school herself.

 

The New York’s Ethical Culture Fieldston School staff didn’t take Patty’s regular involvement very well, but for over $35, 000 tuition, they’d better get used to it soon.

 

Catherine began to pick up some of Michael’s mannerisms, the way she ate her food, or the way she hugged Patty with her little arms wrapped around her neck like a vice.

 

One Saturday morning, Catherine fell at the park. At home, Patty sat her on the bathroom counter and tended to the scraped knee.

 

She didn’t even cry.

 

“All better?” Patty asked as she set the growing child down.

 

“Yes. Thank you, mom.”

 

Catherine ran out of the bathroom, back to her playing without a thought about what she’d just said or what it could have meant.

 

Patty leaned back against the sink, bracing herself as she began to shake. Michael and Julia, and Phil and Ellen, and Tom and Pete, everyone seemed to be gone suddenly. She always seemed to really feel the weight of it in moments like these, where she wished, against her better judgment, that she had someone to talk to about this.

 

She considered calling Ellen, ached to do so some days, but she wouldn’t. She would never call her. Ellen would have to come to her first now.

 

 

 

 

Ellen gave birth a week after her due date. Everything that was supposed to happen, happened. Sophie was healthy, Ellen was healthy and Chris was over the moon about having someone to spoil.

 

When their visitors were gone, and the nurse had taken the baby away for the night, Ellen dreamed of the days to come. The days not filled with the expectation of a baby, of preparing and redecorating the nursery.

 

Her mother blamed it on hormones, the fact that the sound the baby crying made Ellen want to drown herself in the bathtub. It was a good thing her mother volunteered to help the first few months. That way, Ellen was free to lock herself in her bedroom until the crying stopped. Mrs. Parsons looked like she wanted to talk about it more often than not, but she never brought it up.

 

All Ellen could think about was the work she left behind a year back.

 

She picked up her cell phone one day, while her mother was feeding the baby and scrolled through her contacts, back and forth from top to bottom. Patty’s number was still there. She assured herself she didn’t hesitate every time she passed it.

 

She considered calling Katie, but thought better of it. Finally, without giving it another thought, she called Kate Franklin, who was quick to invite her over for dinner and insisted Ellen bring the baby.

 

 

 

 

 

“Look at this little thing!” Kate bounced the baby on her lap. She seems happy in Kate’s arms, but it hadn’t really surprised Ellen because Kate just had that kind of energy. “She is so smart, I can tell already. Aren’t you, little Sophie? Yes, you are. She is beautiful, Ellen.”

 

“Thank you,” Ellen said, really looking at her child and finding herself unable to fight the smile on her face. “Sometimes, I can’t believe I made that.”

 

“It is a pretty great feeling, isn’t it?”

 

“I don’t think I’d let myself feel that until right now.”

 

“Baby blues are tough.”

 

“Baby blues?” Ellen laughed, “That’s what my mom calls it.”

 

“Sounds better than Postpartum Depression, doesn’t it?”

 

“Maybe I’m just a bad person.”

 

Kate looked up with a worried expression on her face even as she lifted the baby’s tiny hand to her lips to place a gentle kiss upon it.

 

“I closed the firm, I moved out of the city, I live in a nice house in the suburbs now, I married my high school—prom date, I have this perfect little human. I have no reason to be…dissatisfied.”

 

“Being a mother doesn’t take away your humanity, Ellen. And it doesn’t make you a bad person.”

 

“That’s what I keep telling myself. I keep telling myself that I did the right thing and that, I’m not—that I’m not Patty.”

 

“You think that by closing your firm you proved something to her?”

 

“I wasn’t—I had nothing to prove to her, I had something to prove to myself.”

 

“What?”

 

At this, she paused for a moment, stared at the way the tealeaves swam at the bottom of her cup, and as the corner of her mouth tugged up in a meek sort of smirk, she said, “That I could leave. For good this time. That I could—live the life I had planned for myself. I wanted to prove that all that happened to me didn’t change me.”

 

“Do you think that’s true? That it hasn’t changed you?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Catherine’s fifth birthday fell on a Saturday. It was sunny and perfect and Patty decided the girl deserved a real birthday party, with cake and other kids and a bouncy house.

 

Patty did the whole thing. She helped Catherine blow out the candles, and passed slivers of cake around, she even talked to some of parents and held her tongue when they only turned out to be insipid imbeciles.

 

Catherine finally collapsed on her grandmother’s lap hours after the party while telling Patty, in detail, about all the highlights.

 

The birthday card sat in the kitchen and when Patty came down once Catherine was safely in her bed. She circled the counter, sending weary glances at the offending object as she moved about the room, clearing away paper plates here, then grabbing a glass she intended to fill with water, but decided on wine instead.

 

It was yellow and green and there was a happy little daisy on the front, when Patty opened it for the fourth time that day, a soft ‘happy birthday’ tune sprung up. On the inside, Ellen’s neat handwriting offered best wishes and a happy birthday. Patty’s eyes followed every dip and curve of the letters as they stretched out across the glossy page, and unknowingly, she inhaled sharply. She closed the card and abruptly stuffed it in the nearest drawer. For what purpose, she isn’t sure.

 

 

 

 

 

Two weeks later, a small card arrives with Ellen’s mail. Skimming through coupons, the phone bill and an invitation to her niece’s birthday party, Ellen almost missed it.

 

It was a plain white, envelope with no return address, but Ellen would recognize the handwriting anywhere, the neat, careful stroke and flourish over the L’s and the tiny dot at the end of the address.

 

She sat on the porch step and set the rest of the mail beside her before she carefully pulled the envelope open and pulled out the blue and white striped card.

 

_‘Thank you for the warm wishes. Catherine.’_

 

It was in Patty’s handwriting but Ellen couldn’t ignore the formality of it. Reading it over and over, she looked for something she might have missed within the single sentence. There was nothing.

 

Only the card, the envelope, and Patty’s distinctive handwriting.

 

Looking out at her front yard, past the not quite picket fence and out at the intensely safe street, she listened to the suburban silence she could really only describe as deafening. Banal and cliché as it may have been.

 

She wanted to have something other than housekeeping to do, she wanted to feel the exhilaration always coupled with the promise of a brand new case. But it wasn’t that, not really, it was that Patty had somehow managed to crawl under her skin all those years ago and was still there now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was a knock on Patty’s door the moment she arrived from dropping Catherine at school. She mentally cursed Barry for not calling and stopped halfway into the apartment to turn back towards the door, managing to pull off her scarf before answering it.

 

Ellen stood in Patty’s doorway, red faced and agitated as she stared back with that furrow in her forehead which the years between them had made all the more pronounced.

 

“Ellen, please come in—“

 

“Why did you lure me back in after I had left you?”

 

“What?”

 

“I was gone, I’d left, after the FBI, after Tom, you were rid of me, and every time, you lured me back in somehow. Why? Why couldn’t you just let me go?” Her chest heaved, her breath caught in her throat.

 

Meanwhile, Patty attempting to process what Ellen was asking her, and with her hand still holding the door open, stared back, mouth agape and speechless for the first time in her life.

 

“Why couldn’t you just let me go after HiStar? Why couldn’t you just let it go, Patty? It could have been so easy.”

 

Patty found herself shaking her head then, answering without thinking, “No, it wouldn’t have.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“You didn’t want me near Chris, right? Why? Why do you care?”

 

“I don’t know!” Patty snapped, her neck flushing, her skin prickly with the discomfort of uncertainty.

 

Ellen grabbed the back of Patty’s head and pulled her roughly into a kiss. Patty, seemingly shell shocked, just barely responded before pulling away, stunned and wide-eyed.

 

“What are you doing?” She asked, like a frightened girl, nearly stumbling backwards in her stilettos as the door swung shut behind Ellen.

 

“THAT’S why.” Ellen’s body hummed. She couldn’t remember the last time she made any significant physical contact with Patty. She didn’t think it had ever really happened. She shivered. “That’s why, Patty.”

 

“No—“ Patty shook her head in nearly comical denial. “—that’s not what I wanted.”

 

“No?” Ellen asked breathlessly, her eyes unable to break away from Patty’s mouth, Oblivious to the way Patty visibly reacted to the younger woman’s stare.

 

Patty mumbled something inaudible as she strode forward and walked right into Ellen’s arms.

 

The door stopped them; Ellen pushed Patty against it, forcing a grunt out of the blonde on contact. They were clumsy pulling at each other’s clothes, desperately and aimlessly tugging while kissing feverishly in between, growing more and more impatient until finally ridding of jackets and shirts.

 

Ellen was mesmerized by her instant fascination with Patty’s bare skin. She couldn’t stop touching it, every thing. She pulled Patty’s skirt well past mid thigh and used both hands to pull the blonde’s underwear off. She scratched her thighs in the process, but Patty didn’t seem to mind much in spite of the tiny hiss she exhaled, so Ellen proceeded. When she first touched her, Patty’s knees physically buckled and Ellen smiled in spite of herself as she held Patty’s waist with one arm, her free hand cupping Patty between her legs.

 

She thought they must have looked ridiculous. Patty, pressed against the door at the shoulders with her hips jotted out, her underwear down at her ankles, her hand palming Ellen’s breast and Ellen’s hand between the woman’s legs.

 

Should they stop and examine the hilarity and ludicrousness of the scenario, it would have driven them both to insanity attempting to make sense of it. There was absolutely no sense in it, yet all at once, felt like the most logical end to their antagonistic relationship.

 

Kissing Patty would be the memory Ellen would take from this she had decided. They kissed hungrily, punishingly, teeth tugging at lips while nails scratched soft skin.

 

Patty cried out the second Ellen pushed two fingers inside her. She could feel the older woman pulsating and throbbing around her digits already, could see her chest heaving as she let her head fall back with an audible thud against the door. She clung to Ellen’s shoulder and the younger woman thought nothing of latching onto Patty’s pulse point as she began to pump her hand, drawing her fingers nearly completely out of the slick, hot vise before thrusting them back inside the blonde. It didn’t take more than a couple of thrusts and some agile rubbing of Patty’s clit with the heel of Ellen’s hand for the blonde to come, sobbing into Ellen’s shoulder, struggling to keep herself on her feet.

 

They kissed against the door for a while, the slowly cadenced meeting of their lips gradually resuming their former desperate introduction.

 

Ellen pressed herself flush against Patty’s shorter frame as she grabbed the blonde’s hand and urged her to grope her breast, Ellen’s own hand molded over Patty’s, leading her and encouraging her to palm the mound harder, until Patty had a handle on the right amount of pressure and Ellen was all but grinding down on Patty’s slightly bent knee. She wanted to feel everything to its intent, wanted to remember long after she was gone, and to be able to feel the ghost of Patty’s hands on her body after she left the woman’s apartment.

 

It would be embarrassing if they weren’t both so far beyond caring.

 

Ellen soon found herself naked and straddling Patty on her couch as the older woman worked a third finger inside her. Ellen felt herself stretch deliciously against the probing thrust of Patty’s hand and her hips rocked sporadically, her eyes shutting while she concentrated on the blissful release of years worth of tension.

 

Patty kissed Ellen’s chest, her breasts, and licked every inch of skin she could reach, committing every illicit reaction to memory.

 

Ellen began to thrust her hips down and forward, then around, working herself up to a faster pace than she usually preferred. She didn’t want to wait this time, she didn’t care about drawing anything out. When she finally managed her eyes to open, Patty was staring back with fascination. Ellen could feel the older woman flex and turn her fingers inside her, testing and experimenting, probably trying to perfect this last thing between them. But there was something other than ambition in the usually icy blue stare now. Regret, perhaps? Longing?

 

The whole thing made Ellen want to cry and scream at the same time. Because in spite of the immense, spine tingling pleasure she felt, all the shame and pain in their collective pasts was floating about them like a cloudy, thick fog.

 

They both realized, in that moment, that this would be it, the moment that would, both change them, and complete them, as well as finish destroying them both once and for all.

 

Within moments, Ellen had collapsed over Patty, her heated cheek pressed against Patty’s shoulder as they regained some sort of composure.

 

Unbeknownst to one another, they entertained the idea of love for an instant in which they were both too confused and too tired to move or say anything. Was it really love, this twisted web between them? Or simply attachment? Neither knew.

 

It didn’t make sense. They only thing that made sense, was that they were here now, and when the kissing resumed, it was clear that nothing would be resolved until their bodies were spent and sore, as they would be hours later. And perhaps not even then. Honesty had never been their strong suit anyhow.

 

 

 


End file.
